hamster wheel

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English

Wire hamster wheel.
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Alternative forms

Noun

hamster wheel (plural hamster wheels)

  1. A circular cage for a hamster or other small rodent, which rotates vertically as the animal runs at its base.
  2. (figuratively, by extension) A monotonous, repetitive, unfulfilling activity, especially one in which no progress is achieved.
    • 2002 June 28, Michiko Kakutani, “Books of the Times”, in New York Times, retrieved 23 September 2008:
      The overall mood of this volume is one of melancholy and loss, weary resignation to one's lot—trudging round and round on the rusty hamster wheel of life.
    • 2020 May 6, Prof. Andrew McNaughton, “Time to challenge some sacred philosophies of recent years”, in Rail, page 32:
      Before the current pandemic, the rail industry appeared to be trapped on an ever-accelerating hamster wheel, trying to keep up with customer demand and political expectation on an essentially historic system itself exposed to greater impacts of climate change.

Synonyms

Verb

hamster wheel (third-person singular simple present hamster wheels, present participle hamster wheeling, simple past and past participle hamster wheeled)

  1. (intransitive, informal, idiomatic) To cycle fruitlessly.
    • 2015, Patti Grayson, Ghost Most Foul, page 111:
      I was shocked that I'd forgotten about the game that morning, but my mind had hamster-wheeled around for hours during the night, long after I should have been asleep.
    • 2019, Mary Hughes, M. J. Chase, Chicago's Chosen:
      But my brain was hamster-wheeling on that one hopefully-not-true-but-probably-was fact.

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Anagrams